


The Improbable Girl

by austeneer731



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Love Triangles, Requited Unrequited Love, Teenage Dorks, Teenage Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 19:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/austeneer731/pseuds/austeneer731
Summary: Kirk Shelton and Gwen Davies have been best friends since kindergarten. They are about to embark on their senior year of high school. When a new girl--the beautiful, mysterious Olivia Chase--arrives at their school, Kirk and Gwen's friendship fractures and turns to something more complicated.





	The Improbable Girl

_A normal day. That’s all I want. A nice, boring day._

The refrain ran through Kirk’s brain as he rolled out of bed. It looped on repeat as he showered, brushed his teeth, and selected a polo and khakis from his closet. With any luck the universe would notice and reward his fidelity to routine.

He swept the pile of books on his desk into his bag and headed downstairs, passing by his sisters’ bedroom on the way. From behind the closed door came the mingled sounds of bad pop music and yelling. That was normal enough. Kirk jogged down the last few steps and came into 'the hall of fame'--so dubbed because this was where his parents commemorated their children's achievements. His Science Olympiad trophies shared a glass case with Maya's various spelling bee awards. On the wall hung a certificate noting Chloe's second place finish in the Annual Essex County Junior Beauty Contest. 

_"One of these things is not like the others,"_ Maya often said.

In the middle of the hallway Kirk halted. The scent of something truly delicious was wafting from the kitchen. 

_Oh, no._

He crept across the remaining expanse of carpet and poked his head through the kitchen door. His mother hovered over the stove, humming to herself as she prodded sizzling bacon with a spatula. A stack of French toast and a platter of fluffy scrambled eggs sat on the counter. 

Kirk groaned. His mother looked up at the sound, beaming. 

"There he is, the _senior."_

“Mom, I told you I didn’t want anything special today.” The breakfast looked a lot more appetizing than Kirk’s usual fare of a Poptart and a banana. But it was definitely _not normal,_ and he wasn’t going to start the day off on the wrong foot. He glanced at the misshapen ceramic clock that hung over the refrigerator—a creation of Chloe’s from art class. “There’s no time for me to eat all of this, anyway. Gwen’s coming by in a few minutes.” 

“I set aside some food for Gwen.” His mother held up a tin-foiled bundle. “Poor girl, no one's making breakfast at _her_ house. But until she arrives, sit down and eat what you can.” She pointed with her spatula at one of the stools behind the counter. 

Steel lay beneath his mother’s sweetness. Kirk slid on to one of the stools and she began heaping pancakes on his plate. 

“I remember when you and Gwen started walking to school together,” she said with a fond sigh. “Adorable little third-graders. I used to stand on the front steps and watch you set off together. You with your Star Wars backpack, her with that Madeline doll she toted everywhere. She _looked_ like that doll, it was a little eerie—”

Kirk's mouth was full of eggs, so he couldn't point out that Gwen's hair was longer and darker red than a Madeline doll’s. Not that he _would_ say that, even if he could, because then it would sound like he spent a lot of time thinking about his best friend's hair. 

Which would be weird.

"But now you're seventeen," his mother continued, "and about to start your _last_ year of high school. This is it, you know--the year when everything changes. So tell me," she propped her elbows on the counter, cradling her mug of coffee, "are you excited? _Nervous?"_

“No.” 

“Sweetie, it’s okay to have feelings about this. You’ve been at Frith Country Day for twelve years—”

“Thirteen. You’re forgetting the pre-k year.” At school, they called kids like him _lifers._ Kirk started on his bacon. 

“Well, before you know it you’ll leave behind FCD forever. That _should_ stir up some bittersweet emotions.” 

She wanted him to feel _something,_ so he cast around for an adjective to offer. “Relieved. I’m _relieved._ I’m ready to be done with the place and move on. In fact, I wish that I could fast-forward through the next six months and get to the end.” He waved a dismissive hand as he drank his orange juice. “I already know everything that’s going to happen anyway.” 

His mother leaned back and folded her arms. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Mathletes, Computer Club, stage crew.” He ticked off his extra-curricular activities on his fingers. “I’ve been doing them since I was a freshman—nothing will be different this year. I’ll get A’s in every class except English, where the teacher will give me an A- because I never cite enough evidence in my essays. I’ll sit with Gwen and Toby at lunch. There’ll be people who say hi to me in the halls, and the people who pretend I don’t exist.”

His mother looked appalled. Maybe he should have left out the grade predictions, even if he was just quoting past report cards. But then she zeroed in on the wrong point. “Who pretends you don’t exist? Kirk, if you’re being _bullied—”_

Good grief. What had he done to convince his mother that he was a fragile glass unicorn? “Mom, I’m not being bullied—I’m being _ignored._ And it’s a good thing.” The rare moments when Hadley Chase-Lubitz or another one of the popular kids remembered who he was—that was when Kirk knew he was having a bad day. “I have friends, and the people I don’t like leave me alone. It’s as good as it gets in high school. I’m really _fine.”_

“Kirk is _not_ fine,” his sister Maya announced as she swept into the kitchen. She took the stool next to Kirk’s, dropping her copy of _Atlas Shrugged_ onto the counter with a thud. Maya liked to arrive places with impressive books in tow. “Bacon?” she said, sniffing the air. “What’s the occasion?”

“This is the start of your brother’s senior year, sweetie.” 

“Huh.” Maya raised her eyebrows. “I thought all this might be for me and Chloe. You know, because this is the start of our _freshman_ year.” 

Their mother opened her mouth, then closed it with snap. “Tell me more about Kirk not being fine,” she said, shoveling eggs onto a plate and pushing it across the counter. 

Maya picked up a fork but didn’t dig in, instead cupping her chin with her hand. “He has delusions of grandeur,” she sighed. 

This seemed like a good time to chime in. “I don’t,” Kirk said. 

“I looked at his college list,” Maya went on as though he hadn’t spoken, “and he seems to think he’s some kind of genius _._ Cal Tech is _numero uno,_ followed by Berkeley, MIT, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Carnegie Mellon. Seriously, Kirk, I’m a freshman and I know that list is a disaster. Haven’t you ever heard of a safety school?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of boundaries? Stop sneaking into my room and going through my stuff.” 

“Why _don’t_ you have a safety, Kirk?” his mother said worriedly. 

“Carnegie Mellon’s on the list.” 

“Yes, but that’s still a rather prestigious—”  


“I just think,” Maya said around a mouthful of bacon, “that there should be more _geographical_ diversity in your list. Put some West Coast schools on there. Have you investigated international possibilities? You might not be able to come home for Christmas if you went to University of Calcutta, but somehow we’d make do.” 

Kirk glared at her. “You know, it’s hard to take anything you say seriously when you look like Ronald Macdonald.” 

He should have crafted a better comeback, because Maya was impervious to jabs at her new haircut. She patted her orange mop. "Personally, I think I look a bit more like Carrot Top." 

“I’m never letting you go to Supercuts alone again,” their mother said sternly. "Really, Maya, what were you thinking? You're far too young to dye your hair. And that _color_..."

"Well, I'm keeping it," Maya said. "So get used to it."

"I just don't understand. You had such lovely long hair. Is this some kind of  identity crisis or..."

Kirk pricked up his ears as he cleared the last of the bacon off his plate. Maybe his mother would now decide that Maya was fragile, and would devote all her energies to pyschoanalyzing _her._

But Maya dismissed her mother's worries with a shrug. "Nah. I just don't want to be mistaken for _her_ anymore." 

On cue, her twin came into the kitchen. Chloe had her sleek blonde hair pulled into a pony tail that brushed her waist. She was dressed like all the popular girls at FCD—belly-button grazing shirt, sweatpants, Uggs. She strolled past the breakfast spread without comment and opened the refrigerator. As she bent down, a lacy thong rode up over the waistband of her pants. 

"Thar she blows," Maya snickered as Kirk looked away in discomfort. 

Chloe turned away from the fridge with a vitamin water in hand. "What are you talking about, _freak_? _"_

"Your choice of undergarments. Are you going to let her walk out of here like that, Mom? Because if I'm too young to dye my hair, then your other fourteen year-old daughter shouldn't be wearing Kardashian lingerie." 

Their mother turned to the sink and began rinsing pots and pans. “Maybe you want to go up and change, Chloe?” The faucet and the metal clanking almost drowned out the suggestion. Kirk suspected his mother had no idea how to deal with her youngest daughter. Chloe’s transformation into a popular mean girl had been brutal and swift. This time last fall she’d been a shy bookworm, the sweet foil to Maya. Kirk couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Chloe reading. 

Puberty, his mother called it. Kirk preferred to imagine a super-villain accident—Chloe tumbling into a vat of chemical goo. 

Chloe rolled her eyes. “I’m not gonna go change, Mom. I’m fine. Anyway,” she checked her phone, “my ride will be here any second.”

“‘Your ride?’” Maya echoed. “We live five blocks away from school. Why do you have a ride?”

“None of your business, freak.”

Kirk saw his mother square her shoulders. “Well, it’s my business.” She dried her sudsy hands and marched over to the back door, blocking Chloe’s exit. “Who’s driving you to school, Chloe? As your mother, I need to know.” 

“He’s this junior, okay?” Hands clasped together, Chloe went into full wheedling mode. “His name is Mike Parish and he’s super nice and cute and last night we were Facetiming and he said that my house was on his route to school and that he could pick me up and _please,_ Mom, could you just be cool about this?” 

“Mike Parish?” Kirk said. “Isn’t he the guy who had to get tested for gonorrhea last spring?”

“ _You,”_ Chloe turned on him in a fury. “You are a pimply-faced loser who has never been on a single date, so any opinion you have about this is totally invalid.” 

“What Kirk said wasn’t an opinion,” Maya said. “‘Mike Parish is as dumb as a pile of bricks’, now _that’s_ an opinion.” 

Chloe tilted her face to the ceiling and groaned. “Can I just get out of here?”

“You need to apologize to your brother, young lady.” Kirk’s mother planted her hands on her hips. 

Chloe’s phone chimed. “That’s him,” she breathed, and threw Kirk a look of false remorse. “I’m really sorry, Kirk. You’re the best.” She hugged her mother, who in her shock seemed to forget that she was supposed to be a barricade. “Thanks so much for saying yes, Mom. I’ll see you later.”

“I never said—” But the back door had already banged shut. 

Their mother stood still, watching Chloe cut through the garden on her way to the street. “What happened?” she murmured. “Six months ago she was baking cookies on Friday nights.” 

Maya stood and cleared her plate. “I keep telling people it’s demonic possession, but no one’s signed on for the exorcism.”

“Are you okay, Kirk?” his mother asked, turning to him. 

“I’m fine.” Kirk rose to follow Maya. He slipped his dish into the dishwasher. As he straightened, he caught his reflection in one of the glass cabinets. The acne scars on his cheeks were deep and angry. “She didn’t say anything that isn’t true.” 

“Kirk’s going to find a really nice girl in graduate school,” Maya predicted cheerfully. 

“Haha,” he said sourly as the front door bell rang. “That’s Gwen.” He grabbed his backpack and scooped up the tinfoil bundle from the counter. “I’ll give this to her. Thanks for breakfast, Mom.” 

From the twitch of her lips, he could tell that she was poised to say more than a simple goodbye. He braced himself for a last question, a final prodding into his feelings, but she only gave him a faint smile. “Have a great first day, sweetie.” 


End file.
